raw version of blog posts

_posts/2022-07-27-blog-raw-permalinks-for-accessibility.md

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "You can read my blog posts using `curl`"
+subtitle: "Publishing raw version of my blog posts"
+date: 2022-07-27 00:00:00
+permalink: raw-permalinks-for-accessibility/
+categories: programming
+author: Mahdi
+---
+
+I realised that my blog and its content, even though very simple and
+lightweight, are only accessible using a full-fledged web browser. I thought it
+would be interesting if my blog posts were available to be read using an even
+simpler interface, cURL!
+
+To make this work, I made a very simple Jekyll plugin that automatically
+generates a "raw" page for every post I create. These raw pages are available by
+prepending `/raw` to the URL of my posts.
+
+Try it out:
+
+```
+curl https://mahdi.blog/raw/raw-permalinks-for-accessibility/
+curl https://mahdi.blog/raw/embodying-the-avatar-videogames/
+curl https://mahdi.blog/raw/rust-box-str-vs-string/
+```
+
+You can get a raw listing of my blog posts at `/raw/`:
+
+```
+curl https://mahdi.blog/raw/
+```
+
+To make this easily readable on small screens and terminals, I used vim's
+text-width setting to make sure my lines do not exceed 80 characters:
+
+```
+:set tw=80
+```
+
+And to reformat my posts, I went over my text lines (I avoided breaking code
+sample lines), and used `gq` to reformat each section.
+
+The source code for my blog is available on my
+[git](https://git.mahdi.blog/mahdi/mahdi.blog) server, you can find the source
+for [the raw
+plugin](https://git.mahdi.blog/mahdi/mahdi.blog/src/branch/master/_plugins/raw.rb)
+as well as the [layout
+file](https://git.mahdi.blog/mahdi/mahdi.blog/src/branch/master/_layouts/raw.html).